Essay on Computer- The Harbinger of a Silent Revolution

Computer Revolution though tangible in India, has been a rather late starter and its progress in the initial years as quite slow.

However, having overcome the many hurdles and constraints, it has today invaded every part of our life not only for routine and other mundane activity but also of enhanced operational effi­ciency. It has indeed heralded a revolution -a silent but most effective one.

In the sixties, there were all types of perhaps legitimate apprehensions from the trade unions and the workers, on one side, and the management on the other regarding the use of computers.

Central to the wrote trouble was ignorance and little knowledge. Even where it was used, it was usually of scientific usage.

But it was soon realized that the computer is an indispensable tool for efficiency, improving productivity, and for cutting off the drudgery and thus improving the quality of life.

A great ally was the increase in the speed of computing and transaction power that increased ten-fold every 5 years. With an as price fall of the computers. One can buy, now, a computer more powerful than the most-powerful computers of the seventies and the eighties at a price or almost one hundredth of the earlier cost.

PCs which were designed and launched for personal use picked power, so that, these became significant application tools in the office. Today, these have penetrated into the environment of progressive farmers in the villages, no more as a previous instrument or a status symbol, but as an indispensable tool for growth and productivity.

That computers have brought in a revolution in every field can be illustrated by a few examples. Take the case of railway reservation system. Before the computerized reservation came, it used to take an average person anything from 2-4 hours to buy a ticket and this needed his shuttling from one window to another.

Today he gets a ticket and reservation from one window in half the time. For Delhi station alone there are over80,000 railway tickets issued daily, a saving of the nation's time of the order of 20,000 hours a day end in terms of money it could be Rs. 20 lakhs per day, or over Rs. 70 crores every year.

Considering all the big cities in the country, the nation is saving a few hundred thousand crores of rupees every year through the introduction of computerized railway reservation system, whereas money spent for computerization wilt be a mere fraction of that.

Let us consider the banking industry. If these are computerized fast, a lot of floating cheques, missing accounts and agony of customers could be minimized.

Another example one could cite is that of process control, in factories which could enhance both production and quality control, it is estimated that in thermal power stations by spending Rs. 1000 crores on process control, Rs. 10,000 crores can be saved.

Computers have societal applications too. With its ability to compute and analyses vast and varied amounts of data in a very short time, computers are a boon in disaster management, forecasting weather or predicting natural catastro­phes. Computers also provide many facilities for the visually handicapped and spastics.

Computers have had a tremendous impact on education too. It has revolu­tionized leaching techniques. No more need the child be burdened with the weight of heavy text books. Information stored in hundreds of encyclopedias can now be available on the tiny computer chip.

Computers can aid in the adult literacy campaign too. One of the computer professionals in a small township. Vallabh Vidva Nagar, has demonstrated how an illiterate adult can become lit­erate through the use of a Personal Computer PC in a very short time with very little guidance. The software developed for this is already available through the Department of Electronics.

Computer technology has come a long way from the huge main-frame computers to the latest supercomputer. A super-computer is several times faster than conventional machines and processes several hundred or even thousand million instructions per second.

Indian Supercomputers such FLOSOLVER (designed for solving complex problems of fluid dynamics and aerodynamics), the multi­purpose high speed PARAM etc are today being exported.

Defense research is another area where super computers are playing an important part in solving a variety of complex problems related to designing of missiles and combat aircraft.

The pace of progress in the field of computers is so fast that what was achievable in the pre-chip era in a matter of years is own possible to accomplish in a matter of days if not hours, minutes and so on. Science update while listing the ten most spectacular of the century listed the Micro-processor as one of the top three items.

Indeed computers have revolutionized every aspect of life. The computer chip has become ubiquitous finding applications in every walk our life from the home to the office, from scientific usages for weather forecasting, military purposes and process control, to entertainment and other routine and mundane activity.

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